At 12:51 AM -0400 6/2/10, David W. Fenton wrote:
I feel no compunction to
avoid converting idiomatic material from the one medium into
different material that is idiomatically equivalent in the new
medium.
I guess that seems to be contradictory, since I said "as little
intervention as possible" but keyboard figuration is often unplayable
or awkward when transferred directly to strings, so changing it to
something more idiomatic seems to me to be exactly "as little
intervention as possible" *if* your ultimate goal is to have a piece
in the new medium that stands on its own, and is not a mere lesser
and incomplete copy of the original.
Absolutely in agreement with that! And there was a recent discussion
on another List (perhaps the OrchestraList, perhaps not) about the
difference between "transcription" and "arrangement." My own
definition of "transcription"--which seems to agree with yours--is
conversion from one medium to another while losing as little
information and adding as little information as possible, but it is
NEVER possible to lose or add none. Some years ago I "transcribed"
Debussy's "Claire de lune" for 12 voices, and had to figure out what
to do with all those running arpeggios. They would have been very
difficult (and would have sounded ridiculous!) in voices, so I had to
reverse-engineer Debussy's realization and re-realize it. And I came
up with ONE possible realization that worked quite well.
(I also needed a bass with a solid low Db, and a 1st soprano with a
good high C#, and that semester I had them!)
John
--
John R. Howell, Assoc. Prof. of Music
Virginia Tech Department of Music
College of Liberal Arts & Human Sciences
Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A. 24061-0240
Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034
(mailto:john.how...@vt.edu)
http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html
"We never play anything the same way once." Shelly Manne's definition
of jazz musicians.
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